


Publishing Complications (AKA: Alix Has to Do Everything in this Freaking House)

by MoonbornChild



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining, Panic Attacks, Sexuality Crisis, also there's an akuma attack in this, mentions of the pretty terrible thing akumas do, nathaniel and marc both have anxiety, two panic attacks actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2019-06-19 17:47:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15515208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonbornChild/pseuds/MoonbornChild
Summary: Nathaniel has never been great at social interaction, and that really isn't helpful when he gets someone akumatized, tries to make up for it, tries to make a comic with this new friend, and ends up having a sexuality crisis. Through all of this Marc insists on being kind, and heroic, and just as timid as Nathaniel.Meanwhile, Alix has just about had it with this pair of idiots.





	Publishing Complications (AKA: Alix Has to Do Everything in this Freaking House)

**Author's Note:**

> Write the fanfic you want to see in the world.

Nathaniel has never been that great at social situations. People are usually too loud, and too much, and right in his face all the time and he can never quite figure out what he’s supposed to say. So he usually stays out of the way, avoids class get togethers, and one time he got caught by Zombizu’s kissing creations because he’d gone to hide in the bathroom after Marinette and Chloe’s latest blow up.

Bottom line: Nathael doesn’t know how to interact with others. Luckily for him, this rule has an exception. That exception is environments where he feels welcomed and unjudged. He feels that way around the other kids in the art room, particularly Alix. He feels that way around Ladybug, Chat Noir, and Marinette, who all saw the worst he had to offer and never judged him for it. He’s started to feel a little more comfortable in his class as well since his art was posted on the school website and everyone but Chloe and Sabrina was excited for him.

He’s drawn a couple of posters for Rose and Juleka’s band, and they’d happily pulled him into their little group. Alix had been his friend ever since she’d decked a kid for bullying him last year, and Marinette and his teacher were two of the kindest people he knew. The art room is one area he feels confident, like he can actually talk, which is why he doesn’t mind when Marinette drags in someone new. This new boy is clearly more anxious than him, which helps, and he seems nice enough right up until he darts out of the room.

But anxiety isn’t something that just goes away, and it doesn’t matter how nice Marinette has been to him in the past. He reacts on instinct. He’s had too many people laugh at him behind his back, and to his face, and trick him, and he yells and rips the notebook in half and he leaves.

He heads for Alix. About halfway there he starts to wonder if he jumped the gun a little bit.

Judging by the struggling superheroes who show up later and the black and white figure threatening the whole city to get ahold of Nathaniel, he thinks the answer may be yes.

The heroes win like they always do. He feels like he owes the other boy, Marc, a rather major apology, but he figures that can come tomorrow, after he’s had a chance to emotionally unpack. Marc seems exhausted. Nathaniel faintly remembers eating half a pizza and then passing out for thirteen hours after his own Akumatization.

Nathaniel throws his bag on the floor later that night, kicking crumpled pieces of paper out of the way until he can collapse on his bed. So. That had happened. Nathael has officially joined the “directly caused an Akuma club.” Jesus, the thought of being reversed had been terrifying. But even as an akuma Marc hadn’t wanted to harm him. He’d threatened to kill everyone in the city, Ladybug had mentioned he’d try to make everyone hate Marinette, and apparently a cop had robbed a bank.

All of that is overwhelmed by the murky guilt swimming around in Nathaniel’s stomach. He’d upset Marc so much that he’d gotten akumatized. He’d probably made the other boy cry alone on a park bench. He’d destroyed his notebook.

Nathaniel doesn’t remember his own akumatization all that well, none of the victims do. But he remembers being mad, so, so mad, and Marinette had filled him in (after a couple of months) of the little fact that, after she tried to save him, he’d trapped her in a box and _left her to drown._ He’d apparently almost cut Chloe in half with a buzzsaw, which near as he could tell ranked among the worst things akumas had tried to do to her.

On one hand, no one’s sure how much akumas are really acting of their own free will, but he apparently had enough self control to go courting Marinette, which really puts the rest of it into question. Marinette insists it’s one of the sweetest things she’s ever seen an akuma do. Nathaniel doesn’t really have time to consider his akuma being sweet when he compares the damage it did.

He rifles through the rest of his memories, ones that don’t involve him being partially brainwashed by a supervillain, and comes to the conclusion that he may have a bit of a temper problem. Normally he’s fine, which really just means when he does lose it he doesn’t even bother trying to keep it under control. Great.

He groans into his hand again as he thinks about this boy, with her red hoodie and nervous smile, crying alone in a park because of him. He wipes a few loose tears off his cheek, sits up, and gets to work.

Nothing he draws that night seems to turn out how he wants it, all of it feels too flat to get his point across, or to be a proper apology for what he did. In the end, he settles on one piece that turned out pretty decently aside from the second _freaking_ eye. He colors it, adds some shading, then spends an hour slamming his face into a blank sheet of notebook paper as he tried to decide what to write

 _Marc would know!_ His brain informs him. _Marc’s a writer, a very good writer, and he’s really nice, and YOU tore his heart into a million tensy tiny pieces!_

Nathaniel groans and accepts his fate as a mediocre writer. He tests out a few sentences before writing the final product down on the sketch paper next to the finished drawing. Hopefully it gets his point across.

Marc had apparently still wanted to create a comic book with him after everything, but a night’s rest can give righteous anger a nice chance to reach a boil. Also, anxiety is still unhelpful. As a result Nathnael has no clue how this will go. He gets to school earlier than usual, earlier than almost everyone, and after a quick check to make sure no one is around slips the envelope into Marc’s locker. He’d texted Marinette to ask which one was his last night. She’d just given him a number and had been kind enough to not ask questions.

Hopefully Marinette’s information is right, but Nathnael won’t know for a while. He leaves the area as sneakily as he could manage (which wasn’t very sneaky at all considering the shade of his hair). He ends up sitting in the art room with the early crowd. No one is too surprised to see him, he’s known to come in early and draw when he’s almost done with a project or hadn’t been able to sleep the night before.

The early crowd usually consists of Juleka, their teacher, and a very sleepy Rose leaning on Juleka’s shoulder. They greet him as he walks in (except for Rose, who’s faintly snoring), and he greets them as well before sitting down and getting his supplies out. He taps his pencil on the paper. He taps it again. Nothing. He’s too anxious to draw.

Nathnael can’t even slam his head into the sketchbook in frustration. The others would notice. He ends up staring blankly at it and doodling mindlessly until the first bell rings. As he gathers his supplies, he realizes he’s been subconsciously drawing Marc for the past half hour. Fantastic.

He follows Juleka and a now awake Rose to class and heads to his seat in the back the room. Everyone probably knows went down already thanks to either yesterday’s news or Alya’s gushing about the incident. A few eyes glance at him as he walks past, and Alix mouths “you okay?” as he passes her. He nods, offers her a shaky smile, and sits down.

Class is fairly normal. He’s not really paying attention, but that’s not new, and he can usually get a decent enough grab on the material to pass projects and tests.

They’re stuck in that classroom until they break for lunch, and Nathaniel decides to go and hide in the art room. He really doesn’t want to be around a lot of people right now. Between the chaos and numbers of the lunch room and the response he’s expecting from Marc he may just have a panic attack. So art room it is.

None of the others are there, which leaves him with plenty of time to be anxious and attempt art that doesn’t want to work. In the end he gives up and polishes up his sketches of Marc because apparently that’s the only thing he can draw today.

The door swings open a few minutes into lunch. Nathaniel glances up to see who entered and drops his pencil on the ground.

“Hi,” Marc says as he shuffles into the room, a piece of paper carefully held in one hand.

“Hi,” Nathaniel manages back, then mentally kicks himself. “Marc, I just wanted to say I’m really sorry about what I did yesterday. It was uncalled for, and mean, and- I’m sorry.” He spits it all out at once and pretends his heart isn’t trying to break through his ribcage.

“It’s alright,” Marc says, kicking at the ground with one foot. “I- I got your letter.” He holds up the hand with the piece of paper in it. “I liked the drawing. It’s um, it’s what my akuma looked like, right?”

“Yeah, I, I dunno, I always felt like turning my akuma into a hero sorta helped me get over it,” but what if Marc didn’t feel the same? What if he’d hurt Marc’s feelings again, giving him a drawing of the villain he’d been only yesterday? “I-I’m sorry if it started you, or offended you, or anything-”

“No, I. I like it,” Marc slowly makes his way over towards Nathaniel, increasing to an almost normal walking speed when Nathaniel pulls a chair up for him. “Would, um, would it be okay if we put him in the comic?”

“That was I was planning on,” Nathaniel says, “if you like that?”

“Yeah! That would be really nice,” Marc sits down. He sets the piece of paper in between them. “So maybe he’s sorta hesitant to join them at first but jumps in with Mightillstrator is in danger?” He pulls a (new, Nathaniel notes with another pang of guilt) notebook out of his bag and opens it to the first page. He grabs a pen off the table and starts making notes. “Would you like to design new akumas or should we stick to the real ones?” He turns his attention to the drawing again, then he looks up and his eyes lock with Nathaniel’s. Nathaniel isn’t sure what expression he’s making, he thinks it’s just a smile, but Marc turns bright red and falls off his chair.

“Are you alright?” Nathaniel asks, hastily getting off his own chair to help the other boy.

“F-fine! I’m fine,” he waves Nathaniel’s hand off, face only turning a deeper shade of red. He looks one wrong move from running out the door.

“Yeah, I’d be fine with designing new villains,” Nathaniel says, hoping to distract him. It works.

Marc gets a little more comfortable around him over the next week as they design the first issue, and he’s welcomed into the art room group with open arms. He’s still even more timid than Nathaniel, but he at least seems to have found what the rest of the art room kids did: a place where he won’t be judged.

Within a few weeks, they’re working together like they’ve been doing this project for years. Marc is more touchy the closer they become, not that Nathaniel really minds. He likes Marc, and his other friends are fairly touchy as well. What he doesn’t understand is why Marc will sometimes suddenly jerk himself away from Nathaniel, sometimes to the extent of leaving the classroom for a few minutes.

Nathaniel doesn’t know why. Does Marc still have some hidden resentment? Does he secretly dislike Nathaniel and is only working with him because he needs a competent artist? When Marc comes back on that particular day he finds Nathaniel staring at his half finished drawing with stiff shoulders and wide eyes.

Nathaniel later thinks it makes sense that Marc, who is also so anxious, would identify the subtle signs of blind panic so easily. He doesn’t ask questions. He just wraps one of Nathaniel’s arms around his shoulders and pulls him into an unused storage room. He leaves and comes back a minute later with a cup of water, which he makes Nathaniel drink, and then sits there and talks quietly about his dogs and reminds Nathaniel to breathe until Nathaniel’s body remembers how to do its job correctly.

“Thanks,” Nathaniel mutters. Despite the water Marc had made him drink, his throat feels like he’d swallowed a few liters of sand. His body had felt like it was melting and now it’s slowly solidifying. He still feels a little off around his elbows and stomach, but it’s better. It’s a lot better.

Alix knows how bad his anxiety is. She knows how to handle his panic attacks. But she’s never spotted one as quickly as Marc did. Marc sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I’m just glad you’re okay. Those things suck.”

“Could we just stay here for a bit?” Nathaniel asks.

“I’ll go get our stuff,” Marc says, presses one hand to Nathaniel’s arm and lets it linger for a moment before he gets up and leaves the room.

He comes back so quickly Nathaniel can only assume he jogged if he didn’t flat out run. He sets their supplies on the floor. Nathaniel picks up his sketchbook and pencil and starts drawing massive circles and hearts on a blank page. Marc just sits and works in his notebook until they have to leave.

Nathaniel doesn’t know why, but he wears his nicest jacket the next day. Marinette had made it for him as a late birthday gift. It wasn’t as fancy as, say Adrien’s scarf, but Marinette designed it so naturally it looks good on him.

He walks into class the next day, and Alix takes one look at him before she practically jumps over her desk and halfway down to the stairs to stare him down. He backs up a step automatically, hoping she didn’t attract too much attention with that stunt. She grabs the front of his jacket and holds it up to the light to see it better. The orange zipper gleams, confirming it’s the jacket Marinette made for him instead of his usual one.

“You wear this jacket when there’s a new classmate, a new teacher, or someone you really admire comes to speak,” she whispers.

“Yeah, so?”

“This is the jacket you wear when you want to impress someone,” she says. She drops the chunk of the jacket she’s grabbed ahold of. “So why are you wearing it today?”

“I don’t know, I just felt like it,” Nathaniel says, avoiding eye contact. It’s the truth, but somehow it doesn’t feel like the whole truth.

He can see Alix doing the calculations in her head, reviewing her information, then her eyes shoot open. “This is about Marc, isn’t it?” she whispers.

Nathaniel’s spine jerks and he stops hunching over as something in his brain goes _ding ding ding! Give the lady a prize!_ “No it isn’t!” he hisses back.

“It so is! He takes you out of the room yesterday, then comes back and takes both your stuff, and neither of you come back to the room for the rest of the day! Are you trying to replace me with a new best friend?”

“No!” Nathaniel says back. His eyes nervously turn to the rest of the class, but they’re not paying any attention to them.

Alix notices where he’s looking and sighs. “Yeah, not in here, come on,” she pushes him out into the hallway, which is pretty much abandoned by this point. “Well if you’re not trying to get a new best friend, why are you doing this? Honestly, it would’ve been more justified right after the whole Reverser incident.”

“I wasn’t trying to impress him then, I just wanted to apologize,” Nathaniel says, running a hand through his hair.

“So now what? He already your friend, Nath, what is this even about-”

“Well maybe I want him to like me as more than a friend!” Nathaniel snaps, and it takes him a moment to realize he said that way too loud. Everyone in the classroom definitely heard. “Oh, no,” he mutters as what exactly he’d said clicks a moment later, sliding down against the wall until he’s in a ball on the floor. “I-I-”

“Deep breaths, Nath,” Alix says, dropping next to him and pressing one hand to his forearm. “Come on, breath with me,” she counts out the breaths with him as Nathaniel has his second panic attack in two days.

After a few minutes Rose slips out of the classroom and sits down next to him. She reaches out and grabs one of his hands and strokes it gently until Nathaniel manages to calm down a few minutes before class is supposed to start. “Have you ever liked a boy before?” she asks after Nathaniel’s breath stops coming is rapid little gasps.

“N-no,” Nathaniel says, and that’s a whole new issue he’s trying to grapple with here. He likes Marc. He like likes Marc. He has no clue what he’s supposed to do with this information besides stare at the stair railing in blind shock.

“I’ve only really liked two boys. One was a nice kid in my class a few years ago, the other was Prince Ali,” Rose says. “Aside from that, I’ve always had crushes on girls.”

Nathaniel knows Juleka and Rose are dating. The whole class does. Rose isn’t coming out to him, but she’s offering him...something. Understanding, maybe.

“Does it feel...different to you?” he asks. This feels a little different. His type doesn’t seem to have changed (he’s always liked kind people who were willing to help out the weak), but he...he doesn’t like Marc the way he likes Ladybug. Liked? Who knows at this point.

“A bit,” Rose says, giggling into her hand. “Most girls are pretty, but I really only find a few boys attractive. Maybe it would help if you thought back? Think about other boy’s you’ve seen. Maybe you had some crushes you didn’t notice?”

Around this time they have to go back into class because Miss Bustier is walking up the staircase and Nathaniel knows if she catches him having another panic attack he’ll get sent to the nurse’s office. He usually appreciates that, but right now he’d rather be able to contemplate this revelation with Rose nearby.

He ends up doodling Marc for the rest of the class and thinking back as Rose had advised. He has a very startling realization that the way he blushed around Adrien for weeks following him standing up to Chloe was not, in fact, because Adrien was famous. He once against resists the urge to slam his head into his sketchbook.

He walks to the art room at lunch, as has become his pattern, and Marc is waiting for him. He’s smiling faintly to himself as he writes something in his notebook. He looks up as the door opens and smiles, and he has a really nice smile and Nathaniel really likes his lipgloss and honestly how did he only figure this out this morning. “Hey, Nath- oh geez, are you alright?!” Marc’s notebook drops to the ground as he rushes over to Nathaniel. He almost reaches out to touch Nathaniel, then hesitates and pulls his hand back.

Ah. Two panic attacks in as many days has probably not done amazing things for Nathaniel’s appearance. “I-I’m fine,” he says, staring at the floor.

Fun thing about Nathaniel’s “I can not be super nervous as long as I know the people I’m with won’t judge me” rule: it doesn’t apply to crushes. The rest of the group walks in that afternoon to find Nathaniel and Marc at work. Nathaniel is staring intently at his sketchbook while Marc keeps looking between him and his notebook.

Alix sighs and goes to pick up her bottle of spray paint. “Hey, Mr. and Mr. Suave, how’s the comic going?” she asks as she shakes the bottle up.

Nathaniel jerks to look at her and his eyes scream murder, but Alix just raises an eyebrow and starts painting. He returns to his drawing and wonders if he’s making Reverser too pretty and Marc is going to realize Nathaniel has a thing for him.

“Is, uh, is that a new jacket?” Marc asks. Nathaniel jerks up, looks at him for a moment, then nods. “It’s nice.”

“Thank you,” Nathaniel says. Dammit, where’s that confidence he had earlier? “Marinette made it for me.”

He smiles. “Marinette’s really sweet.”

“She is,” Nathaniel says. “I used to have a crush on her.” _WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIM?_

“O-oh,” Marc looks down at his book. “That’s...that’s nice.”

Alix locks eyes with Nathaniel and makes an exasperated face. He sticks his tongue out at her and returns his attention to his latest crush. He doesn’t know how to talk to him, and he’s terrified that if he says anything it’s going to be the wrong thing and this time Marc is really never gonna forgive him.

Luckily, he doesn’t have to figure it out. Marinette spots something out of the art room window, goes flying through the door, and a minute later the Akuma alert starts and they have to evacuate the building.

“I mean, I remember when you got akumatized,” Marc says, and Nathaniel guesses he’s the type of anxious where once he starts talking he just can’t make himself stop. “I wasn’t in the library when you attacked Chloe, but I saw people running out of the room and then I saw Ladybug and I think I saw you running across the roof?”

That sounds about right based on what other onlookers have told him. “Yeah,” he says. “I wish we kept our powers after everything, it would be so cool.”

“It would be nice,” Marc says. “I mean, that’s part of why we’re writing the comic, right? Unless you’re not writing the comic at all for that reason, oh geez I’m- WATCH OUT!”

Nathaniel’s been in enough akuma attacks to duck. Marc swings his notebook over Nathaniel’s head and it makes contact with the blank eyed, flower-coated Nino who had almost gotten ahold of Nathaniel.

They run down the rest of th stairs onto the dirt, only for more plants to rise up and wrap around their ankles. Nathaniel just sighs and accepts his fate.

They both get brainwashed. Again. Nathaniel has a faint recollection of making flower crowns for an akuma called Mother Earth while the rest of the brainwashed students either help him, or water plants, or chase down any “threats to the environment” which he guesses is everyone the akuma hasn’t gotten ahold of yet.

The healing magic washes over him and he sits up, the flower crown falling out of his hands. He notes that nearly everyone around him is wearing a flower crown (as are several inanimate objects), including Marc. His is made out of white roses with tiny, smaller flowers woven in between. He faintly remembers knowing the tiny flowers are lilies of the valley. The akuma must have lent her victims some plant knowledge.

Either way, the crown looks nice nestled in Marc’s dark hair. Marc drops his watering can and one hand reaches up to feel at the flowers in his hair. He manages to pull a white rose loose. He looks at for a moment, then his eyes blow wide with shock. He turns to look at Nathaniel, then the flower, and then he darts out of the area.

Nathaniel isn’t sure what white roses represent, but he knows they’re roses, and he’s certain Marc is never going to speak to him again. A few of his classmates look at him with concern, but he’s decided class is over for the day and goes home.

He goes home, flings himself on his bed, and cries for about an hour over that entire mess of a day and his ability to discover he likes boys, his crush on the sweetest and most talented boy he knows, and then screw it up so badly he’s sure said boy will never talk to him all within eight or so hours.

After he’s done with his crying he checks his phone and finds eight mixed texts from Alix, three missed calls from Alix, two texts from Marinette, and one from Rose. He decides he should probably call Alix before she kills him and hits “return call.”

She picks up almost instantly. “Nath what the hell is going on?” she asks.

“Well as a general rule your personality makes you unlikable, so that’s why little Johnny threw a snowball at you-”

“Not the time for your snark,” Alix cuts him off. “We come back to class, you’re not there, and then later Marc comes into the art room after having clearly cried his eyes out, takes one look at your sketchbook, then basically dives on Marinette and starts crying again!”

It feels like Alix reached between his ribs and yanked his heart out. “I didn’t mean to,” he whispers. “I think I gave him a romantic flower crown and now he’s disgusted by me.”

“Nath,” Alix says, and her voice is softer. “There’s no way Marc is going to hate you for that. Huh?” she pauses, and he can faintly hear her talking to people on the other line. After a moment she returns her attention to him. “Okay, I’m going to give the phone to Marc,” she says.

Nathaniel hangs up. He doesn’t want to hear how bad he screwed up. Alix rings five more times, then he watches blankly as a string of angry text messages appear on his phone’s screen before she presumably gives up.

He really should have known better. This is Alix he’s talking about. About half an hour later his doorbell rings. He ignores it. It rings again, and again, and eventually Nathaniel gives up and goes to check through the peephole.

Alix is standing outside his door looking distinctly unamused. Unaware he’s watching her, she rings the doorbell again. Nathaniel gives in and opens it. “Are you aware of this amazing thing called not jumping to conclusions?” she demands, walking into the door so he can’t close it on her. “Okay Marc, door’s open.”

Nathaniel freezes. Of course. Freaking Alix.

“I really think this is a bad idea,” Marc’s voice comes from around the corner. Nathaniel stiffens as he realizes the other boy sounds on the verge of tears. “He clearly doesn’t want anything to do with me, I should really just go, my parents are gonna expect me home soon-”

Whatever is left of his heart is stuck in a blender and grinded to a fine dust. He. He can’t just leave Marc out there if he’s miserable. “You can come in if you want,” he says, and backs away from the door.

He heads into his bedroom and sits down on the bed. After a minute he hears a pair of footsteps, and looks up to see Alix in front of them and Marc hiding in the room’s doorway. “So,” Alix says, picking up one of the crumpled pieces of paper on the floor and tossing it between her hands. “You two have a lot to figure out, so I’m going to go sit in the living room and leave you two alone unless one of you makes a break for the front door.” She leaves, pushing Marc into the room properly on her way out.

There’s a few moments where they both avoid eye contact before Nathaniel decides to bite the bullet. “I’m sorry about the flowers,” he says.

“No!” Marc says, and Nathaniel has a moment to wonder how he managed to screw a simple apology up before Marc keeps talking. “I liked the flowers. I just...I realized what they meant and I freaked out and ran off.” He’s hunching in on himself more than usual and has backed himself against the doorway. “I just...I had this stupid thought for a moment that you knew what they meant and it made me happy but it scared me and then I realized there was no way you would’ve known. It’s so, so stupid I’m sorry I promise it won’t bother you about it again-”

“I knew what the flowers meant,” Nathaniel blurts out before he fully realizes what he’s saying. “I mean, I don’t now but under the akuma I think I knew.”

“Oh,” Marc says. “Did you um, did you mean it? What those flowers meant I mean. I mean, nevermind, forget I said anything about it, that’s ridiculous, don’t worry about it.” He takes another step back towards the door.

“Roses are romantic right? All of them?” Nathaniel asks, drawing on all the support his friends have shown him over the year.

“...yeah.”

“Then I meant it.”

“Oh.”

They kind of just look at each moment, Nathaniel waiting for a response to his rather unusual confession. Then Marc sniffles, falls to the floor, and starts crying.

Nathaniel feels guilt rush through him again. He shouldn’t have said anything. He jumps off his bed and rushes to the other boy despite all his instincts screaming to go find a dark corner to hide in. He doesn’t know whether Marc would want him to touch him or not and decides on probably not. “I’m sorry,” he says, and those are all the words he can find.

“I’m not sad,” Marc manages through his tears. Nathaniel doesn’t really believe that. He really wants to find that dark corner right around now, and is about to get up and dive out of the window or something to avoid Alix when a hand wraps around one of his. He doesn’t really know what to do in response to that, and then Marc presses the hand to his mouth and kisses it and Nathaniel’s brain officially gives up on functioning.

“Oh,” he says, and Marc smiles nervously at him through the tears. “Okay,” he holds an arm out and Marc happily presses himself into his side. They stay like that for a while, and once Marc stops crying they talk about their comic and their friends and akumas and he’s so incredibly nervous he’s going to screw up but it’s nice. It’s really, really nice.

* * *

Nathaniel walks into the classroom the next day to see a victorious Alix leaning over Alya’s desk. “I told you I was the better matchmaker!” she says. “Meanwhile, your girl still can’t even talk to her crush half the time!”

“Alix,” Nathaniel says, exasperated.

She turns to him, grinning. “Hey, lover boy! Did your boyfriend let you borrow his lipgloss?”

Nathaniel pauses, then presses his lips together. Yep, there’s lipgloss there. He hastily wipes it off on his sleeve as Alix’s eyes widen.

“Oh my god you didn’t put that lipgloss on, did you? NATH! NATH COME BACK HERE I DEMAND ANSWERS!”

Nathaniel chucks a piece of paper at her as he finishes his walk up the top of the classroom. He has some new pages of writing in his pocket, passed off earlier that morning, and this comic isn’t going to draw itself.


End file.
